The Internet of Things is the next big thing. Investors, big business and entrepreneurs are starting to take serious note of the wide ranging family of technologies that will connect all manner of everyday objects, products and appliances to the Web.

A report released Monday by New York-based CB Insights found that nearly $752 million was invested into Internet-of-Things companies in 2012, a growth of 28 percent over the previous year. These companies included home automation systems, healthcare devices, technologies for tracking products and personal analytics tools.

A headline this week in IT trade publication InformationWeek barks that the Internet of Things is a “Wake up Call for Enterprises” and they’re not the the only ones taking notice.

Here’s a roundup of everything that has been written about the Internet of Things in the past week or so alone.

“This might sound like a scary encroachment of technology, but the Programmable World could actually let us put more of our gadgets away,” writes Bill Wasik. “Automating activities we normally do by hand and putting intelligence from the cloud into everything we touch.”

The Internet of Things does not mean things connected to the Internet.

Liat Ben-Zur, senior director of project management at Qualcomm, writes on AllThingsD that merely connecting our gizmos to the cloud won’t be enough. They need to be able to share information and talk to each other. Right now, they can’t.

Alex is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist. He writes about media entrepreneurs and creatives for Upstart Business Journal.

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